Eyes Wide ShutThe trouble with fantasies are that if you aren't too careful, they have a tendency to bleed over into your waking life. As Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) begins to dwell upon a fantasy stirred by his wife Alice's (Nicole Kidman) recounting of her own fantasy about a naval officer years past, Bill descends into an after hours shadow realm of New York City and beyond, encountering those who cradle his desires, and lead him into temptation. Like Dante's descent into the Inferno, Bill traverses the circles in his downward spiral from reserved and faithful husband into something seedier, making his way deeper into an underworld of his own construction.
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Life for Bill and Alice Harford is comfortable...they live in an nice apartment on Central Park West, Bill has a good job as a hard-working doctor who makes house calls. After a party at one of Bill's client's opulent apartments--that of Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack)--where Alice is pursued by a Hungarian creep name Sandor (Sky du Mont)--as predatory as Dracula--and Bill is dogged by a pair of models, the two share a night of passion, set to the tune of Chris Isaak's "Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing"...but did "baby" do a bad, bad thing? The next night, the young couple get high and carry on a sociological discussion about the nature of men and women and their sexual appetites, to which Bill claims that he isn't jealous of Alice--isn't concerned that she would be unfaithful to him--because he trusts her to be honorable. She in turn shares a story about a near encounter with a naval officer when she and Bill were on vacation some time ago, in one of my favorite monologues in cinema. The thing is that Alice's testimony suggests that while she was ready to give up her stable life with Bill for a meaningless sexual fling with the stranger, she didn't do it. And yet for Bill, that sense that she lusted for another amounts to the same thing as adultery, and from then on, that feeling of betrayal haunts him, eats away at him, and alters his perception and behavior over the course of the rest of the film. Bill finds himself involved in exchanges with others where Bill appears to be the object of their sexual attention. From his encounter with Marion (Marie Richardson), the daughter of his recently deceased patient, and Domino (Vinessa Shaw), the prostitute who appears too bashful to put into words what she has hooked Bill into paying for, Bill is suddenly the focus of everyone's lust, as if he were in some kind of waking male fantasy. That fantasy may not even be Bill's exclusively, as Bill is solicited by men and women both--the jocks passing him on the street accost him with homophobic debasements, but one theory posits that such behavior is a mask for latent homosexual desires. Speaking of masks, all of this leads to the culmination of Bill's descent into a realm of shadows, a place where Bill has pulled back the curtain and discovered a vast secret society lurking behind it, involved in a bizarre recreation at a palatial estate upstate, where his former medical school acquaintance, Nick Nightingale (Todd Field) plays a liturgical mass for a masked ball, part formal, part orgy. Indeed, Bill has crossed to where the rainbow ends.
Eyes Wide Shut was Stanley Kubrick's final film; in some ways, it is his most self-reverent, with nods to several of his other works. For instance, when Bill goes to rent his costume for the ball, he discovers that the gruff proprietor, Milich (Rade Serbedzija) has a teenage daughter (Leelee Sobieski) who in her salacious efforts with the older men is a latter day Lolita. The revisiting of the phrase "forever and ever and ever" (or its equivalent) at the end of the film is a recurring mantra from both The Shining and A Clockwork Orange, and even Bill's mask is purported to be modeled after Redmond Barry of Barry Lyndon. This all goes without even acknowledging Kubrick's trademark tracking shots and persistent use of classical music to score his scenes. Eyes Wide Shut was adapted from the novel "Traumnovelle (Dream Story)" by Arthur Schnitzler--with some stylistic changes--and the title of the book should be a significant clue as to the nature of Bill's nocturnal escapades. When Bill goes to visit Marion to comfort her after her father has passed, she observes that "it all seems so unreal", as vivid blue light (apparently signifying nighttime) floods through the windows. Almost all of Bill's interactions play out like a fantasy from here on, as unlikely scenarios present themselves to Bill while he stokes his contempt for Alice's imagined indiscretions. For a film that deals so frankly about sex, the predominance of blue is also something of an inside joke, as a "blue movie" is sometimes a phrase used to describe a pornographic film; it also lends itself to a kind of unnatural glow, jarring in contrast to other scenes with more natural lighting instead. It is no exaggeration to say that Eyes Wide Shut deals with erotic content, but is itself not a pornographic film, though it features eroticized scenes. The two stand out instances which illustrate this are the scenes where we see Alice in varying states of dress and undress--voyeuristic, and even titillating, she is the opening shot to the film. On the other hand, the masked ball leads to a tour through a house filled with rampant sexual depravity--Bill is the passive voyeur here--although there is an eeriness to it all, haunting music playing through, and all participants remain adorned with their masks, which appears absurd in some instances in light of their positions. I've interpreted this to suggest that the camera views Alice as Bill does--he loves her, she is his wife, but even still, her confessions cause him to recoil in light of his own unanswered questions about his own sexual persona, leading him on this hypnotic odyssey. When Bill is at the masked ball, it is as though his mask is invisible to others, since one couple on a balcony above him appears to recognize him, nodding at him in acknowledgement. How could they know who he is? We may have suspicions about who this mysterious man in the pronounced Viennese mask is--later all but confirmed--but how do we come to that conclusion? Is not the purpose of a mask to conceal one's identity? But here, that is rather the opposite; in the mixed up realm which Bill has consigned himself, he is out of his depth, and has stepped into the world of powers beyond his own upper class capacity to understand. When Bill is confronted to remove his mask, he does so without question, only becoming concerned when he is told to remove his clothes. More than the "second password", I feel this gives him away as being not "one of Them", since the mask is not a part of him and he regards it as no more than an accessory. The mask is a literalization for the metaphor of a persona, another self which we adopt to allow ourselves permission to act in a way which differs from how we believe others perceive us. Bill's mask is not strong, because although he begins to slip into darkness, he awakens--or is awoken--before the deep sleep swallows him whole.
Recommended for: Fans of a complex and adult psychological drama about sex, love, and relationships tested, and how our perceptions influence us, and vice versa.
Eyes Wide Shut was Stanley Kubrick's final film; in some ways, it is his most self-reverent, with nods to several of his other works. For instance, when Bill goes to rent his costume for the ball, he discovers that the gruff proprietor, Milich (Rade Serbedzija) has a teenage daughter (Leelee Sobieski) who in her salacious efforts with the older men is a latter day Lolita. The revisiting of the phrase "forever and ever and ever" (or its equivalent) at the end of the film is a recurring mantra from both The Shining and A Clockwork Orange, and even Bill's mask is purported to be modeled after Redmond Barry of Barry Lyndon. This all goes without even acknowledging Kubrick's trademark tracking shots and persistent use of classical music to score his scenes. Eyes Wide Shut was adapted from the novel "Traumnovelle (Dream Story)" by Arthur Schnitzler--with some stylistic changes--and the title of the book should be a significant clue as to the nature of Bill's nocturnal escapades. When Bill goes to visit Marion to comfort her after her father has passed, she observes that "it all seems so unreal", as vivid blue light (apparently signifying nighttime) floods through the windows. Almost all of Bill's interactions play out like a fantasy from here on, as unlikely scenarios present themselves to Bill while he stokes his contempt for Alice's imagined indiscretions. For a film that deals so frankly about sex, the predominance of blue is also something of an inside joke, as a "blue movie" is sometimes a phrase used to describe a pornographic film; it also lends itself to a kind of unnatural glow, jarring in contrast to other scenes with more natural lighting instead. It is no exaggeration to say that Eyes Wide Shut deals with erotic content, but is itself not a pornographic film, though it features eroticized scenes. The two stand out instances which illustrate this are the scenes where we see Alice in varying states of dress and undress--voyeuristic, and even titillating, she is the opening shot to the film. On the other hand, the masked ball leads to a tour through a house filled with rampant sexual depravity--Bill is the passive voyeur here--although there is an eeriness to it all, haunting music playing through, and all participants remain adorned with their masks, which appears absurd in some instances in light of their positions. I've interpreted this to suggest that the camera views Alice as Bill does--he loves her, she is his wife, but even still, her confessions cause him to recoil in light of his own unanswered questions about his own sexual persona, leading him on this hypnotic odyssey. When Bill is at the masked ball, it is as though his mask is invisible to others, since one couple on a balcony above him appears to recognize him, nodding at him in acknowledgement. How could they know who he is? We may have suspicions about who this mysterious man in the pronounced Viennese mask is--later all but confirmed--but how do we come to that conclusion? Is not the purpose of a mask to conceal one's identity? But here, that is rather the opposite; in the mixed up realm which Bill has consigned himself, he is out of his depth, and has stepped into the world of powers beyond his own upper class capacity to understand. When Bill is confronted to remove his mask, he does so without question, only becoming concerned when he is told to remove his clothes. More than the "second password", I feel this gives him away as being not "one of Them", since the mask is not a part of him and he regards it as no more than an accessory. The mask is a literalization for the metaphor of a persona, another self which we adopt to allow ourselves permission to act in a way which differs from how we believe others perceive us. Bill's mask is not strong, because although he begins to slip into darkness, he awakens--or is awoken--before the deep sleep swallows him whole.
Recommended for: Fans of a complex and adult psychological drama about sex, love, and relationships tested, and how our perceptions influence us, and vice versa.